The Elder Scrolls Online developers Zenimax Online have called on players to “name and shame” would-be gold spammers who might have contacted them - despite previous rules that prohibited naming offending players on the game’s forums.

Zenimax disabled private messages on the official ESO forums after being made aware that users had received solicitations from gold spammers.

“We can assure you we are working as quickly as possible to identify and remove these spammers from our forums,” they wrote.

The developers urged players to post the usernames of nefarious private messagers publically on the forums, in an effort to “expedite the process of identifying and banning”.

Zenimax acknowledged that they were “making an exception” to their own Community Code of Conduct - and pledged to investigate each account individually to protect against false reports.

Otherwise people might just report whoever last stabbed them to bits in PvP Cyrodiil, presumably. Do people really do that sort of thing?

This week, the latest Elder Scrolls Online patch introduced a number of new measures in Zenimax's fight against bots and gold spammers. “We appreciate your patience and understanding,” said the developers. Of course, it's not understanding they need, but subs.

This "pampering of players" in regards to naming and shaming them is a bit sad. Sometimes I miss working with Russian communities, who work very differently - Russian players expect the publisher/developer to actively explain why they banned people. If there isn't a weekly thread of publically naming and shaming certain players, the developer (and community manager) is deemed "weak" by Russian players.

Good times. Good times. I think we need this in our western games again. ArenaNet did well on that Reddit "Why were you banned" thread.